These Foundation resources shed light on how the ongoing national debate about deficit reduction may affect Medicare, Medicaid and other health-care programs. These resources include analysis of specific savings proposals, polling on the public’s views of deficit-reduction options, summaries and comparisons of relevant elements of major deficit-reduction plans, and explanatory briefs and backgrounders describing key issues related to the debate. This page highlights some key resources examining deficit reduction and provides you with the standard search result page for a site-wide search on the deficit reduction tag.

Featured Deficit Reduction Resources

With Medicare expected to be a key part of Washington’s ongoing debate about solutions to reduce the federal budget and national debt, this report serves as a compendium of policy options that may be discussed in upcoming budget debates. The report presents a wide array of options in several areas and lays out the possible implications of these options for Medicare beneficiaries, health care providers, and others, as well as estimates of potential savings, when available.

This brief examines the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for federal Medicaid and CHIP spending over the 2014-2024 period. CBO’s budget projections, also known as “baseline” projections, reflect CBO’s best judgment about how the economy and other factors will affect federal revenues and spending under existing laws. The brief also examines CBO estimates of the coverage effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and spending. Understanding the CBO baseline estimates is important because they are the basis to evaluate the federal cost and coverage implications of proposed federal policy changes.

Several major deficit-reduction plans include provisions that would impose an explicit limit on the growth in Medicare spending. In general, such limits would trigger cuts if Medicare spending grows more rapidly than a target, such as the growth in the economy. This brief prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation describes…

The Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation present a briefing to discuss the complexities of raising the age for Medicare eligibility. Speakers address questions on how this proposed change may affect beneficiaries, employers, and the workforce, as well as the cost and coverage implications for those approaching…

In the coming debate about the deficit, policymakers will struggle to craft a package of spending reductions and new revenues that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on, totaling as much as four trillion dollars over ten years. Medicare, Medicaid and potentially the Affordable Care Act will have their turn…

Washington, D.C. – A new report released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows modest state costs for implementing the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act compared to significant increases in federal funds, allowing some states to see net budget savings even as millions of low-income uninsured Americans gain…

The Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation present a November 16 briefing to discuss the components of this key policy crossroads with a particular emphasis on the implications for health programs and the health care industry. Automatic cuts would not apply to Medicaid, but Medicare providers would…

Beginning January 2013, Medicare spending will be subject to automatic, across-the-board reductions, known as “sequestration,” which is slated to reduce Medicare payments to plans and providers by up to 2 percent. This sequestration results from provisions in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which raised the debt ceiling and will…

With pressure mounting to slow the growth in federal health care spending, policymakers are exploring ways to reform the way care is delivered to the 9 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries who also receive Medicaid – a group that on average is sicker and frailer than other Medicare beneficiaries, and therefore…

These Foundation resources shed light on how the ongoing national debate about deficit reduction may affect Medicare, Medicaid and other health-care programs. These resources include analysis of specific savings proposals, polling on the public’s views of deficit-reduction options, summaries and comparisons of relevant elements of major deficit-reduction plans, and explanatory…

This data note draws primarily on two national surveys, the September Kaiser Health Tracking Poll and the Kaiser 2012 National Survey of Seniors, to examine how health issues are playing as a 2012 election issue for seniors, how this politically important group feels about a variety of policy proposals related…

This analysis of the House Budget Plan that was passed in 2012 finds that repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and converting Medicaid to a block grant would trigger significant decreases in federal Medicaid spending and could result in substantial reductions in enrollment and payments to providers compared to current…